Signing With an Agent During the End of the World, or Selective Querying for Marginalized Authors

I don’t have to tell you what month it is. Over and over I’ve seen the memes, the articles and opinions, the subtweets of those memes, articles and opinion: this month is going to be hard. Knowing that, I wanted to look back on the last year and take stock of all the Big Good Thing I did in the last year: queried and found my agent! I've been represented by the supremely awesome and understanding Mike Whatnall (@mwhatnall) at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret since October 2020, and I truly couldn't ask for a better partner in creating the stories I want.

When you start out with your completed and edited manuscript, perfecting the query itself is scary and difficult. I had plenty of help from critique partners, blogs, and very kind people in the industry who’ve offered help to their communities, knowing how difficult it is. I’ve seen multiple folks in the industry who’ve said a huge thing that helps in recognizing what makes a good query is the opportunity to read a ton of queries. Humans are great at seeing patterns if we take in data over time.

It can also help to see what’s worked before, which is where query101.blog can come in handy. Laura R. Samotin (@LauraRSamotin) is collecting the query letters that originally connected authors to their agents. Mine can be found here, if anyone is interested in seeing that part of the process.

After checking with my spreadsheet, my querying started in early February 2020. But I was very selective with who I wanted to query. My list had fewer than fifty people on it total, and I didn’t even get halfway through it, because I sent out in rounds. But the query is only part of the battle. A lot of writers focus on the perfect query letter, but sometimes you don’t need your query to be better than everyone else’s; just like your book will have an audience that doesn’t include everyone, your book isn’t for every agent. My criteria was strict:

1. Kind Human Being

This is a bit of a given. But, have I seen this person be cruel on social media/to friends who’ve queried them? I think I have fairly good intuition. Obviously this is fallible, and people present themselves in public and online differently than they are. But it needed to be on the list.

1. Specifically Represents & Asks for Queer Books

This took a lot of time of the MSWL site while building my list. There were agents who had maybe one (bestseller) LGBTQIA+ book in their favorites or “I want the next…” list but nothing else indicating they were really prepared to champion me or my books. I didn’t want to query agents who wouldn’t represent other things I wanted to write in other genres or age categories.

We’ve all heard horror stories about agencies and agents, and I especially, being queer with a queer protagonist and love interest, as well as a hugely queer cast, wanted to stay away from anyone who gave me the feeling they were looking for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors like Pokémon, trying to catch us all.

1. On Social Media

This doesn’t mean Extremely Online! I wasn’t looking for follower counts or hot takes, I just wanted someone who was on/understood social media to the extent we’d have a common frame of reference for everything going on. Of all the rules, this is the one I was most lenient about. I don’t want to feel beholden to social media as an author or human, and I don’t want any agent to feel that way, either.

1. Respectable Agency

We’ve all been very aware of the agencies that have been called out for bad practices. The whisper networks talk about it, and there are receipts still on Twitter. I knew who I was staying far away from, but I also knew they could pop up out of nowhere with new agencies, or as solo agents, and that info might be harder to find. Especially since I only joined Twitter in April of 2019. So I wanted to make sure the agency was legit and not as schmagency or a vanity press. There are a lot of them, and they love to participate in Twitter pitch events; I also loved to participate in pitch events (as is evident in my query to my now-agent, since it includes the pitch), so the research was (and is) super important.

Okay, the list wasn’t long but finding a fit to hit all four was harder than I thought. For one, I want to write in a number of genres and age ranges, but also other forms of media: graphic novels, novellas, comics, IP, TV, screenplay. Seriously, I want to write tons of cool stuff. I had “must have” and “perk” columns for those types of things, so some weren’t deal-breakers but even the must-haves kept some folks off the list.

There were agents I vibed with on Twitter and queried, too. Their rejections were kind, and so were my others: a few fulls, some form rejections, but nothing nasty and nothing overtly homo/transphobic, which I chalked up to the rules I set for myself and my query list. Even the agents who liked my pitches during PitMad or DVPit had to fit these rules.

I queried slowly, and after about a dozen and a half rejections, I stopped sending more out. Pitch Wars was coming up and I wanted to go through revisions regardless if I got in. But there was one last PitMad right before submission. I got one like, and after a little research, I was interested in the agent and thought there was no harm in sending out one last query. If I got into Pitch Wars, I could pull my query (along with a couple others still-outstanding), and let those agents know what was up.

This attitude, already being ready for the next round of revisions, really saved me from some of the difficulties in editing, especially the first overall edit letter Mike sent me. Of course it was hard work, but I was already in the mindset of knowing it wasn't perfect. Mike's vision for my story and their passion were what really made me confident that they were the one to champion not only my book, but my career. The meticulous spreadsheet-making and MSWL-crawling had been unnecessary, although given the chance, I'd do it over again. I got lucky, the right-place-right-time lucky of PitMad, but if I hadn't? That spreadsheet with notes and dates and agencies, with a tick box for sent, and a color coded system for outstanding queries, would be guiding my efforts still.

When I see people who talk about hundreds and hundreds of rejections for a single book, my mind boggles. I cannot imagine finding that many agents who represent not only the book I wrote, but the books I want to write. I’m actually still tickled I found my wonderful agent who excitedly says, “Yes I would like that now please!!” every time I bring them a synopsis or short pitch I'm excited about.

The photo I took while excitedly waiting for my celebration meal at Waffle House even has one small telltale sign of the year and the times: there's a small fogged spot on the lens of my glasses from where I'd just had my mask on, ordering as quick as I could before going to wait outside. Because I drafted this manuscript in November 2019, most of my celebrations have been during Unprecedented Times, and I'm hopeful that because I managed to persevere and pitch and query and revise and revise again during the absurdity and the unprecedented stress of 2020 and honestly, so far, 2021, this will be the hardest part of my career.

Every book isn't for every person (or agent, who are people, wild, I know). But if traditional publishing is the goal, it's worth it to find the right agent, the one who will champion your career instead of the one book they want to market. Especially for marginalized creators, we must guard our art from those who want to show it off as an oppression scout merit badge. Talk to group chats and whisper networks, and visit resources like Writer Beware.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. If my experience helps anyone, though, I'm happy to share it. The last year has truly been a ride for every single one of us, but I'm glad mine included getting closer to some of my biggest dreams. I hope your next steps bring you all closer to your biggest dreams, too.